Particularly in the beverage industry, various beverages are being packaged in increasingly larger bottles. Two common sizes currently being distributed in the marketplace are 64 oz. and 1 liter bottles. Such bottles when filled with a beverage are relatively heavy, for example in the area of four and a half pounds per filled bottle, and present substantial problems when attempts are made to multipackage such bottles with economical packaging materials. The packaging problems are complicated by the necessary handling that occurs from the beverage plant to the eventual consumer. After filling and multipackaging, the packages must withstand the rigors of shipment, commonly by truck, storage, and handling through retail distribution channels to the shelves or racks of a retail store. From the retail store the package must have sufficient integrity and strength to firmly and safely hold the rather heavy bottles as they are picked up by a store customer and carried and handled in various ways from the store to the purchaser's place of use.
The most common presently used package for such bottles is a package made of paperboard generally in a basket form. Paperboard baskets can be made substantially strong to safely carry the weight load of a plurality of such bottles. However, there are at least two noteworthy disadvantages to such paperboard baskets. Firstly, they are relatively high in cost and in many instances uneconomical as a one-way package for nonreturnable bottles. Secondly, by rather loosely carrying the bottles, the bottles are subject to movement and vibration during normal transport procedures with the undesirable result that the generally highly decorated bottles are abraded to substantially detract from the esthetic impression of the bottles.